Fear and Atheism.
I watched this video of Richard Dawkins speaking at the ‘Protest the Pope’ rally with a mixture of disappointment, alarm and brewing anger. Disappointment at the way he failed utterly to use reason, or logic, or rationality in his speech, preferring instead emotive platitudes and fallacious diatribes. Alarm at the crowd of protesters cheering his every sentence, reserving their loudest jeering for his portrayals of the Pope as ‘an enemy’, and for his characterisation of ‘them’ as running scared from ‘us’. Brewing anger at the way the name ‘atheist’, which I have identified with ever since I first heard it, has been dragged through the mud over the last weekend by both the Pope’s ridiculous taunting and by Dawkins’ brawling mob of ‘secular humanists’ or whatever it is they’re calling themselves now.
I’m not even fully certain about writing this post, and it will be with a heavy heart that I press the ‘publish’ button and send my thoughts out to the wider world. Not because I would expect Richard Dawkins or any other of these prominent atheists to actually read my words, but because I’ve had such brimming respect for him and others for so long, and I’m sad that it’s rapidly dying away1. I read The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker and especially The Ancestor’s Tale, and they filled me with a sense of joyous wonder at the majesty of nature which I have never discovered through any religion – but right now, I find myself feeling that the author of these great books has lost his way.
When the Pope told us, during his overly-expensive-but-otherwise-mostly-harmless State Visit, that Hitler was an atheist and secularism is the root cause of the Holocaust, my first reaction was to laugh. I mean, Hitler? Really? Obviously, it’s unlikely the Pope’s ever been on a Usenet discussion group (though HM The Queen was sending email in 1976, so anything’s possible) but have none of his speechwriters, helpers, aides or support staff ever heard of Godwin’s Law? Whether Hitler was an atheist or not makes no odds, so apart from a little light ridicule, who gives a damn?
Apparently Dawkins does. Not only that, but he’s hell-bent on proving to you that Hitler not only wasn’t an atheist, Hitler was a Catholic. He devotes some five minutes of his speech to this – nearly half of the video. It’s still utterly fallacious; still pathetically stupid, still pretty much playground debating (‘you’re a Nazi!’ ‘No,you’re a Nazi!’) but nevertheless, the crowd aren’t saying ‘now hang on a minute’, they’re going bonkers for it. Yeah! The Pope’s a Nazi! And a kiddy fiddler! Woo!
Well I’m calling time on this. I’ve grown tired of Dawkins and his unholy crusade. I’ve been having misgivings for quite some time, but now I’ve had enough. Apart from anything else, I don’t know what he’s out crusading for. This used to be about atheists not being discriminated against – a problem for more relevant in the god-fearing southern states of America than here in broken Britain. In England, at least (and I appreciate it’s more complex in Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland), you can be pretty much anything from Atheist to Catholic to Jedi and rarely does anyone bat an eyelid. So what’s Dawkins’ problem?
Is it merely the existence of religion which so gets his goat? I’m as versed as anyone in the atrocities carried out in the name of religions, but is Dawkins really so certain, so absolutely sure, that religion itself is the very root of these problems, rather than merely being itself a symptom of a deeper problem with humanity? If Dawkins really believes that atrocities like the Crusades, the Salem witch trials, the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks or the abuse of children by figures of trust and authority couldn’t possibly have happened without religion, where is his evidence for this? He does believe in the need for evidence, doesn’t he?
I’ve argued with many people over many years who’ve tried to tell me that ‘atheism is just as much a religion as Christianity or any other faith’. I’ve always tried to patiently point out the errant stupidity of this – that atheism has no core doctrine of faith; no unified hierarchy or organisational structure; no codified group of beliefs to which all atheists ascribe. The very idea of it is self-evidently oxymoronic.
And yet looking at Dawkins now, I see not a defender of rationality, not a beacon of light in an dangerous world of faith-based stupidity. I’ve begun to see a figurehead of a new and somewhat sinister religion. One which cares not at all about those genuinely positive things which have come from faith on a personal or global level. One which isn’t interested in introspection, or analysing the faults in the arguments on which it is based. One which is built on a foundation of hatred towards the members of all other religions, which is willing to persecute Catholics on the basis of atrocities they didn’t commit, and which sees all of this as a battle between ‘us’, the enlightened forces of good, and ‘them’, the irredeemably evil ones. The enemy.
I don’t know what that is, and I don’t know what to call it, but I’m certain that it isn’t the atheism I grew up with.
Star Wars seems to be about as close to a religion as the people I’m closest to have ever had, and strangely enough I feel like Star Wars has a lesson which can be applied here – Anakin Skywalker fell from grace because he began to hate, and to see others as his enemy. This sermon could end on no better note than with the words of Master Yoda – “fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate; hate, leads to suffering.”
From where I’m sitting, Dawkins already seems to have lead us to hate. I dearly hope that’s as far as his new crusaders go.
1. It’s worth mentioning that this doesn’t apply to all prominent atheists, either – Stephen Fry’s speech for the Intelligence Squared debate, for instance, is a wonderful example of an emotive yet still rational and reasoned argument against Catholicism, and Tim Minchin’s Pope Song [Caution - Very Explicit] is simply wonderful – though arguably that is as much a song about offence as it is about the Pope specifically [?]
